dvd

Consumer electronics have staged a recovery this year.

Consumer electronics makers are expected to grab sales of $340.4 billion for 2010, up 6.2 percent from the $320.7 billion seen in 2009, according to data released yesterday by iSuppli. That contrasts with last year when sales dropped 4.4 percent compared with 2008.

"As shown in the early results from Black Friday, consumer confidence levels in 2010 are higher in all regions of the world than they were in 2009, and buyers are more inclined to acquire new devices or upgrade old electronics equipment," Jordan Selburn, … Read more

As Netflix revenues soar and as Hulu ponders a $300 million public offering, a group of people who played an enormous part in the brightening prospects of Web TV is very much overlooked.

Managers at the major Hollywood studios: Disney, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Paramount, NBC Universal, and Sony Pictures are pretty much despised in tech land allegedly for their anti-innovation and protectionist ways, but the record shows that, over the past year, they have helped build the foundation for Netflix's success and are embracing digital distribution like never before.

Last summer, the studios signed unprecedented licensing deals … Read more

Feel free to buy the latest Harry Potter movie in Blu-ray for road trips--Audiovox released the first Blu-ray player for in-car entertainment systems. The electronics manufacturer introduced its latest offering at CES Unveiled this week, and the Blu-ray DVD player should help users make the transition to the newest movie format.

"As more and more Blu-ray discs enter the market, consumers will want to maintain a single video collection that works both in the vehicle and at home. Our new mobile Blu-ray disc players lets them do just that and it will also play standard DVDs, giving the consumer … Read more

The 13-inch version of Apple's revamped MacBook Air doubles the USB ports (to two) and adds an SD card slot, but it still lacks an optical drive. And it's not alone--other recent DVD-free 13-inch systems include Toshiba Satellite T235D and the Asus U35JC.

In smaller 11- and 12-inch laptops, we're used to not having an optical drive, although they do occasionally turn up. But to some, the optical drive is becoming like the telephone modem jack that used to be standard on every laptop--a bit of legacy hardware that rarely gets used.

The main reasons we used … Read more

There's a lot to like about iLife '11, Apple's just-updated suite of media sharing and editing applications. We got our grubby mitts on it last week, and posted the full review on Friday.

Click here to read it.

Apple had a long history of releasing a new version of the suite every January for four years, then it was six months late for the '08 version before getting back on track for '09. This version comes a year and nine months off that cycle. The big question you're probably wondering is whether it was worth the wait? … Read more

Netflix added nearly 2 million subscribers last quarter as it continues to morph from a DVD rental company to "a streaming company that also offers DVD-by-mail," CEO Reed Hasting said.

What that translates to is third-quarter net income of $38 million, a 26 percent jump from the year-ago quarter, or 70 cents per share, up 35 percent from last year. Revenue was $553.2 million, a 31 percent increase over the year-ago quarter. Wall Street had been expecting Netflix to report earnings of 71 cents per share on sales of $549.7 million.

Gross margin was 37.7 … Read more

Let's say I own the box set of TV's most criminally canceled show, "Firefly." Now let's say I want to watch some episodes on my iPhone. Or iPad. Or even just my laptop. Do I really have to spend more money to buy or rent them from Amazon or iTunes?

Not if I have a good DVD ripper, which copies movies and TV shows from the discs I already own and converts them to other formats (like, say, iPhone-friendly MP4).

Rippers often sell for $30, $40, or even more--but I have a pair you can … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed from our readers. This week we have questions on SUID file errors when fixing permissions, options for ejecting optical drives, problems with optical drives immediately ejecting, and the lack of a track joining option for audio books in iTunes 10. While we continually answer e-mail questions and present a few here, we certainly welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the comments.

Question: SUID File errors when fixing permissions

MacFixIt reader "Ian" asks:

When I do a Permissions Repair … Read more

The iPad's initial sales rate has surpassed that of the iPhone and the DVD player, making it a "runaway success of unprecedented proportion," a Bernstein Research analyst said in a note to investors earlier this week.

With Apple selling 3 million iPads over the first 80 days and an estimated 4.5 million over the three months ending in September, Bernstein Research retail analyst Colin McGranahan said that the tablet is destroying all previous records of consumer electronics adoption.

Specifically, sales of the iPad have shot past the 1 million iPhone handsets sold during the smartphone's first quarter and the under 6 million sold during the full year of the phone's 2007 debut. The numbers quoted for the iPad and iPhone are all on a global basis, though McGranahan told CNET the assumption from his end is that around 45 percent of iPad sales today are in the U.S.

Sales of Apple's popular tablet have also greatly outpaced those of the DVD player, which had been the largest-selling non-phone electronic product with 350,000 units sold just in the United States in the first year, according to data from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). Originally unveiled in Japan, DVD players hit the U.S. market in early 1997. The first DVD players were pricey, selling for close to $1,000, though the cost quickly dropped over the following years. It wasn't until 2002 that DVD players were selling at around 4 million per quarter in the U.S., a number that's about the same today, according to the CEA.

Based on McGranahan's estimate of 4.5 million iPads sold over the past three months, which Fortune says is actually a below-average forecast among the analysts who follow Apple, consensus is that Apple has so far sold around 8.25 million tablets. Apple is due to release its earnings report for its fiscal fourth quarter October 18.

The iPad is due to capture around $12 billion in global sales for the year, according to McGranahan's note, which is also bullishly predicting sales of almost $20 billion next year, with around $9 billion in the U.S. alone. Those numbers contrast with the entire U.S. consumer PC market, which takes in sales of around $25 billion annually, and the U.S. notebook/Netbook market, which sees sales of around $19 billion a year.… Read more